Scott Morrison is holding firm on taking his company tax cuts policy to the Senate when parliament resumes, signalling the government would still take it to the next election if it once again failed to convince the crossbench.
The fallout from the super Saturday byelections, particularly the Longman contest, where the LNP primary vote dropped by almost 10%, has turned some members of the Turnbull backbench skittish about the policy. Former prime minister Tony Abbott has voiced concerns it was not “a vote winner”.
But a somewhat combative Morrison maintained it was the right policy at the right time and the government’s resolve to see it passed had not changed.
“No, it hasn’t, that is our policy, we put it in the 2016 budget, we took it to an election, we won the election and we have sought to legislate that ever since,” he told Sky News.
“We’ve had success in legislating it for companies up to $50m and we will take that legislation to the senate, as we have all of our other measures … and we will work constructively with the senate as we always have.”
The government is hoping to lower the company tax rate from 30% to 25% over 10 years.
Asked whether anything had changed following Longman, and Abbott’s suggestion that it should be dropped, Morrison said no, but left some wriggle room for change.
“A sensible government doesn’t throw out a knee jerk reaction the day after a byelection and completely run in the opposite direction,” he said.
“That is what Bill Shorten would do because he is driven completely by populist politics. We are driven by what we believe is right for the country, we will listen carefully I think, to what people are feeling in those electorates.”
Other Queensland MPs are not so sure, with Luke Howarth, who stands to lose Petrie if the Longman result was replicated across the state, advising the government to drop the policy if it couldn’t convince the crossbenchers to come on board.
“It doesn’t kick in for years to come anyway, so I don’t know why we would want to take it to the next election quite frankly, if we can’t get it through the Senate now,” he told Sky News on Monday.
But Morrison said it was the time to hold firm.
“The longer we have made the case for this, the support for this has only increased,” he said.
“As recently as a month or so ago, over 60% of people were in favour of more competitive tax rates for Australian businesses and this is just one of many policies that we have in place and are thinking of taking further which are leading to the record growth we are seeing in our economy.”
Andrew Laming, who holds the southeast Queensland electorate of Bowman with a buffer of 8.9%, said he believed Morrison was on the right track.
“We definitely should be [holding on to the company tax policy],” he said.
“We have to continue doing the right thing … we will be working hard to convince the crossbench, and it is guided by them.
“Bill Shorten has become irrelevant in the tax debate. This is between the party of low taxes and the crossbenchers and what they are willing to support.
“What they want is what the nation will have.”
Keith Pitt, who holds the central Queensland seat of Hinkler with a margin of 9%, was less convincing on whether or not the policy should be taken to the next election, if it fell down in the Senate in the coming months.
“That is up to Mathias Cormann and of course the treasurer and the prime minister – but my view is pretty straight forward – we put things into the Senate which are defeated on occasion and then we move on,” he told Sky News on Tuesday afternoon.
“… We move on to whatever is the next item on the agenda. If we look at company tax, I can tell you that right now, that no one in my electorate is sitting around their lounge room or their kitchen tables, talking about company tax cuts for major internationals.
“They are just not. They can’t pay their bills, particularly their electricity bill. Cost of living is the number one issue for them, that is the focus that we should be looking at.”
Parliament resumes mid next month.
